Health Chief Asks Fund Transfusion : Budget: Uram will urge supervisors to use up to $2.3 million in county money to make up for state budget cuts.

Giving his first detailed public response to state budget cuts, Orange County Health Care Agency Director Tom Uram said Wednesday that he is recommending that supervisors use up to $2.3 million in county funds to restore cuts in state funding for mental health and county clinics.

But Uram indicated that hospitals and doctors will probably have to absorb more than $13 million in reduced state reimbursements to Indigent Medical Services, a program that gives care to the county’s 24,000 “working poor” who do not qualify for Medi-Cal.

“Public safety is a higher priority than health--that’s the considered opinion of the Board of Supervisors, the Legislature. That is the way they think,” Uram said in remarks to the United Way Health Care Task Force, a coalition of leaders from community clinics, doctors, hospitals and nonprofit agencies.

Uram said he believes that the county administrative office will recommend this week that funds for mental and public health receive local “bailout” money when the Board of Supervisors adopts a budget Aug. 29. The CAO’s letter is expected to be made public Friday.

“To avoid the trauma of layoffs, I think they’re going to give me some money to do this,” he told the task force.

He added that if money is not restored to the state budget, cuts to mental health and some other health services “might double” in January. He noted that several bills have been introduced in Sacramento to restore health-care money, including one by state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach).

After their meeting with Uram, task force members said that any cuts to the county’s health budget are unacceptable, and several members argued that public health is as much a safety issue as crime.

If Orange County residents “are really interested in public safety, they’re going to have a really bad safety problem if people are ill,” Barbara Talento, an associate professor of nursing at Cal State Fullerton, warned. “The measles problem last year is the tip of the iceberg.” The nationwide measles epidemic killed two Orange County infants earlier this year.

County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider could not be reached for comment, but Karen Davis, the office’s administrative manager of finance, said Uram’s comments on the CAO’s recommendation represented “a potential . . . nothing is final.”

She said the recommendations will be made today or Friday.

So far, Davis said, the Health Care Agency appears likely to take a $13.6-million cut in indigent medical care, a $3.7-million cut in mental health and an $800,000 cut in state monies that help fund public health operations.

In related action, leaders of the Hospital Council of Southern California have mounted a major campaign to restore money to the Indigent Medical Services program.

In an unusual “legislative alert” that was sent to 43 member hospitals Friday, council vice president S. Russell Inglish asked members to “write or call your county supervisors.” Inglish urged that supervisors either vote to restore all IMS cuts--or to give IMS a share of any funds generated by new fees.

To resolve a projected $40-million county deficit, the board is considering imposing new jail-booking fees or property tax fees. Supervisors voted Wednesday to delay considering a jail-booking fee to cities, which officials say could raise $2.1 million.

“Hospitals and the Orange County Medical Society view this issue (of IMS funding) as a critical public safety matter,” said John Cochran III, Orange County area chairman for the council, which represents 43 hospitals here.

Noting that four hospitals in the North County have had to close their emergency rooms in the last 16 months, Cochran, who is president of La Palma Intercommunity Hospital, said IMS reimbursements to county hospitals and doctors underwrite the hospital’s already-strapped emergency care system.